The White House had very little sympathy Wednesday for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor after his stunning primary loss and insisted that immigration reform still has a chance of passing this year.

“I do think that this outcome does provide some evidence to indicate that the strategy of opposing nearly everything and supporting hardly anything is not just a bad governing strategy, it is not a very good political strategy either,” principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One, after stipulating “that he was not an expert in Republican primary politics,” in the words of the print pool reporter on the trip.

“That is why the president has pursued a different approach [and] … has laid out what his priorities are,” Earnest added.

Though Cantor’s loss has been interpreted as a sign that progress on immigration reform is even more dead among House Republicans than it was with Cantor as the conference’s second-ranking leader, Earnest insisted that reform still has a chance.

“Majority Leader Cantor campaigned very aggressively against common sense, bipartisan immigration reform but yet in the analysis there are some who suggest that his election was a key to getting immigration reform done,” Earnest said. “I am not quite sure how people have reached that conclusion. It is the view of the White House that there is support all across the country for common sense bipartisan immigration reform.”

Earnest, who is to become White House press secretary later this month, pointed to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s win in Tuesday’s South Carolina GOP Senate primary as a sign that immigration reform is not finished. “You would be hard pressed to name a constituency more conservative than those who cast ballots [in] South Carolina,” he said. Graham made “persuasive case why comprehensive immigration reform was the right thing for the country” and nonetheless won his primary in a conservative state, Earnest said.